The Good Psycho: Notes on SBF’s Sociopathy (Premium Bonus)

Except for killing animals, he ticks all the boxes.

“That’s exactly like Sam Bankman-Fried!”

Sam Bankman-Fried’s continued insistence on his own innocence is a huge reason I’m so emotionally engaged with his story. Obviously there are the fascinating and bizarre connections to EA and his philosopher parents, but the thing that I keep coming back to, that obsesses and confounds me, is his genuinely nonsensical and still-continuing insistence that, somehow, all that missing customer money is the fault of the lawyers who pushed him to declare bankruptcy after it was already gone.

I’ve used the word ‘delusional’ to describe this many times – Sam seems deeply disconnected from reality. But occasionally, and with increasing frequency, I’ve also referred to him as a ‘sociopath.’ Now, after doing more research, I’ve learned that persistent denials of responsibility for the consequences of your own actions are a universal symptom of sociopathy.

That is, Sam’s delusion of innocence isn’t merely “denial” as we might understand it, arising out of shock or trauma and refusing to reckon with reality. Instead, it’s one of many ways he shows the precise symptoms of a sociopathic neurological disorder.

The fundamental feature of sociopathy, also known as anti-social personality disorder, is defined simply as the lack of conscience. That is, a sociopath feels no pain or guilt when they harm other living beings.

Sociopathy is a skeleton key to many other baffling decisions by SBF, including his choices to plead innocent, go to trial, and even take the stand in his own defense. Sociopaths’ lack of conscience impacts their motivation and decision-making processes so profoundly, that normal people can find them nearly impossible to comprehend.

As clinical psychologist Martha Stout writes in The Sociopath Next Door:

“When someone makes a truly conscienceless choice, all [normal people] can produce are explanations that come nowhere near the truth.”

In fact, such misunderstanding makes normal people easier victims for predatory sociopaths - one reason it’s so important to walk through Sam’s symptoms as a case study.

This contrasts with our failure to understand the ravings of a delusional schizophrenic - sociopaths understand the language and symbols of human life, and communicate in ways that are superficially coherent. But more deeply, sociopaths are not that different from schizophrenics: Dr. Stout writes in no uncertain terms that sociopaths are “insane.” Their appearance of sanity, particularly their ability to consciously simulate normal emotion, is what makes them so uniquely dangerous.

In reading through Stout’s book, I had constant moments of Rick Dalton-like recognition as confounding elements of the SBF story suddenly snapped into place. Here are other common symptoms of sociopathy that Bankman-Fried has displayed, and which I’ll go into in more detail below:

• They consider every aspect of life a “game” to be won or lost, and winning the game of life is their only source of real pleasure.

• They are almost supernaturally charming, even if in nonconventional ways.

• They unwaveringly refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.

• They exploit sympathy and play the victim when caught or confronted.

• They need constant stimulation.

• They feel no love towards parents, family, or lovers, viewing them only strategically.

• They are “consistently irresponsible.”

• They are impulsive and fail to plan ahead.

• They are deceitful and manipulative.

• The only widely-recognized symptom of sociopathy that I don’t see in SBF, in fact, is abusing animals as a child. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he did.

Sociopathy also fits another aspect of Sam’s story: the roles of Effective Altruism and his mother’s utilitarianism in shaping his behavior. While research finds sociopathy is roughly 50% genetic, it can also be either mitigated or worsened by the sufferer’s cultural context.

For instance, sociopathy is much rarer in Japan and China than in the West. Stout theorizes that this is because these cultures heavily emphasize the interconnectedness of all living things. A sociopath’s core lack is a sense of connection to and responsibility for others, and culture can mitigate that.

Or culture can make sociopathy worse - and that’s what seems to have happened in Sam’s case.

At root, Barbara Fried’s mechanistic determinism encourages believers to think of other humans in terms either of abstract levels of aggregate happiness, or as instruments of achieving such happiness. More egregiously still, Effective Altruism in its current form implies living humans are merely instrumental to the achievement of the happiness of future humans.